


While Waiting

by rustywrites



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Sadstuck, Unrequited Love, prose, sad dirks, sad teens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-07
Updated: 2012-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-30 18:12:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rustywrites/pseuds/rustywrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your television never taught you how to deal with this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	While Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> This got away from me.
> 
> Title from Trent Reznor's 'While Waiting'.
> 
> Cross posted to tumblr here: http://rustywrites.tumblr.com/post/17199751478/homestuck-fic-dirk-jake-while-waiting

Part of being simultaneously aware of two versions of yourself at once is also being aware of the paradox of it all. The logical part of your mind (the largest part, you're proud of that much) hates it; knowing and accepting how impossible everything is. You're a walking contradiction and damn if that isn't enough to stagger you. You don't actually have a name for the non-logical part of your brain though you know it's there. You're not a machine, no matter how much you'd like to be. (You don't name it because you hate it for being so ready to accept just how fucked up everything is and how there's nothing you can do about it. You don't name it but sometimes you're a little glad. Gotta have something there to keep you from losing your god damn mind.)

\--

When you're eleven years old, you learn to attempt the life that TV teaches you to lead. Try school. Try friends. Try acceptance. Try rebellion. Try and fail, try and fail, try and fail. You hate the way They look at you almost as much as you hate how you feel like you're missing something and They're all in on. Hollow, empty, unworkable wrecks of things. 

Intellectually, you're aware of how ridiculous you, but you're very alone and you're all you've got. You adapt. Intellectually, you know that when Cal starts to speak, it's probably a bad sign, but you're too caught up on the fact that his voice is so much different than what you would have imagined that you can't bring yourself to care. You adapt. Intellectually, you understand that there's nothing healthy about existing so far in your own head that you can't seem to find away out. You adapt. 

The TV laughs. Cal laughs. You make yourself laugh along with them. 

–

There once was a boy who used a green font and talked like he was 80 years outside of his own time. It's a chance encounter on the roulette of perversion and desperation that is Pesterchum's 'random' feature. You're confused by him initially, and your first instinct is not to trust that he really is your age – After all, no one talks like that anymore, much less kids. But he laughs (types, you remind yourself, the laughings in your head) at your jokes and says he likes cartoons too (probably not the ones you do, or to the degree you do, but that's okay) so you keep talking. And talking. And talking. Until it's very, very late and you ask why his parents let him stay up for so long and he responds quite frankly that he doesn't have any. 

You add him to your ChumList after that. You say you'll keep talking to him, checking in, 'cause if he doesn't have any parents someone's got to look out for him. It's a convenient excuse to keep initiating contact without making yourself look needy. You're proud of yourself for it. You leave out the part about being alone, too. 

–

The worst part is being so self-aware of how incredibly, undeniably, outstandingly fucked up you are. It's comforting, to a degree, because people who are really insane aren't self-aware so at least you haven't done a completely graceless fucking pirouette of the handle just yet (haa haa hee hee hoo hoo). 

You program a version of yourself to talk to. It doesn't go necessarily as planned, but at least it gives you something to hate that's outside of you. Sort of. Things seem a little brighter when you can funnel your directionless self loathing into something that can respond in kind. 

It helps until it doesn't. 

–

You desperately want to hate the way your pulse picks up and your palms start to sweat when you talk to him. It's not comfortable or elated or any of the above. There's no flourish of music or accompanying epiphany, the sudden realization that 'yes, this is it, this is what it feels like to feel something for someone'. You understand, logically, that those things don't exist. You understand. But something feels like it's missing all the same. If you're anything, you're underwhelmed. 

Your television never taught you how to deal with this. 

In retrospect it's easy to see where and why it happened. A thirteen-year-old's cripplingly lonely psyche reaching out to cling to the fraction of sameness as presented through pesterlogs and endearingly anachronistic speech patterns over brief video chats. It all makes sense now, on the other side. Logically, at least. Of course you'd be in love with him. That's what love is, chemical triggers being sent off and short circuiting the wiring of your brain. It all makes complete sense. 

But if that's the case, you're not really sure why you feel so fucking confused. 

–

The tattoo is kind of a stupid idea, you'll admit. You're not really sure what sparked it but one day you find yourself with the drive to forge all the proper documentation that will push a shop to ink a minor without an adult present. It gives you something to do for a day and the sting of the needles against your arm makes you feel very much alive.

\--

You don't dream because you don't sleep anymore – and even if you did, you're sure you wouldn't be able to dream in the classical sense, since Derse is anything but classical. You wish you could miss it but you really don't. No sense in dreaming when all you'll do is wake up cold and exhausted and still very much alone. 

Instead, you dedicate your waking self to project after project. Keeping busy. You build yourself more friends, the kind that you can touch and see even though they're cold and metal and barely human at all. You build yourself enemies, too. Real ones that you don't feel guilty about killing. The autoresponder has started doing more harm than good, but you can't bring yourself to deactivate him. The word your mind supplies for that is 'suicide' and you refuse to let yourself even start down that path of moral jungle gyms. 

The confusion has tamed itself into a dull roar. You've come to terms with the fact that lov- liking someone isn't the wonderful, world stopping thing you naively hoped it would be and you've come to terms with the fact that you do, unfortunately, feel things that pull the heavy wool of emotion over your brain for one Jake English. You've come to terms, but you're still not happy. 

You're much less happy when he comes to you waxing poetic about a girl – Jane's her name, nice girl, pleasant and quick and (no no no no) a perfect match for him. You (try to) come to terms with that, too. 

–

Life goes on.

You never really join in on Roxy's crusade to prevent the game from being played at all. You know it's inevitable the same way you know that the earth is round and that you need air to live. You do your best to make sure everyone is prepared, that Jake is prepared. It's a game you can't win, but at least you can give 'em hell while you try and you're not one to give up that easily though your autoresponder tries to convince you otherwise time and time again. 

You create avatars to train your friends. You take special care with Jake's (it's not because you resent Jane for her family; her normal life. You don't. That's stupid. That's stupid and something you would never do.) but you're not really sure why you make it look so much like you. You just don't want him to be alone anymore, you tell yourself. That's all. It'll be good for him to have another human (not human) around. It'll be good and it will protect and train him. Your stomach churns as you send it over, piece by piece with something that might be anxiety or might be hope (you're not sure for what).

He jokes about you and your ego when he finally assembles it and you joke right back. Your cheeks heat up when he calls it a 'handsome bugger' and for a split second you're about to type something really, really stupid. 

You stop yourself. 

Life goes on. 

\--

The Page dies on Prospit. Far away, you suddenly find it harder and harder to breathe (fuck, fuck, not real, fine, fine, he's fine, not real, not here). His text is green as ever on the screen as he continues to prattle on about this that or the other thing. Nothing has changed. The Page is dead and nothing has changed. 

He asks you what's wrong as you're watching them carry his body away and for a second you want to scream 'You were just fucking murdered. Why don't you wake up? Why don't you care?' but your mouth stays shut and your hands won't move. Eventually you realize that you're crying. 

GT: Are you still there bro?  
GT: Zoning out again i see.  
GT: Thats alright i really must dash anyway. Let us reconvene our most dire discussion at a later time.  
GT: Bye dirk!  
golgothasTerror [GT] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

You stare at the chat window for a long time before you can bring yourself to close it. He's fine. He's fine. Not real. He's fine. 

Prospit mourns its loss together but you remain alone. 

–  
When The Game starts, you try and find your movie script moment. You've planned it, bleeding your heart to Cal night after night; exactly what you'll say and how you'll say it. You tell yourself that your hopes aren't up because, after all, yours is not that genre of story and, honestly, you just want to tell him for the sake of clearing the air. He'll understand (and feel the same, oh please, oh please.)

You've seen him before but never in person and in real life (or whatever facsimile of real life The Game has created) the clarity of his green eyes is enough to stagger you and you forget your perfectly planned script the instant you open your mouth. 

He hugs you, fierce and tight, and your plans abandon you in a flurry that almost feels like heartbreak because the way he looks, looked at Jane is so much different than the way he looked at you even though he doesn't hug her you know. You just know. 

“Something wrong, chum?” He asks, almost sing-song, “You looked as if you were about to say something.”

You shake your head, “Oh, no, it's nothing.”

The world ends. Life goes on. 

The game is played at lost. 

–

–

–

(There once was a boy who became the devil. A Page who became a Lord. He doesn't speak in anachronisms anymore. He doesn't speak at all.) 

As you lay bleeding, prince of nothing, you think of the way things used to be and it feels like forgetting.


End file.
